Rabbit Heart
by Eridanus1123
Summary: Bravery is the new currency, and the war is fresh enough in everyone's mind that he still equates to little more than dirt in the wizarding world. Draco Malfoy is sitting alone in a bar, bemoaning his fate. Enter one long-lost acquaintance.


_The looking glass, so shiny and new,_

_How quickly the glamour fades._

You wouldn't think that he's the sort of person to retain any of those redeeming features that make the anti-heroes, the ones that are the reason fucking Snape's so goddamn beloved a decade after his death even though he was an insufferable sadist. And you'd be right, to put it frankly, because when he thinks he's being charismatic and charming, people want to upturn their drink on his head, and when he's being an asshole, it somehow comes off as confident and self-aware and the girls love it. The war and the last ten years have been such a mind fuck that he doesn't know what's what, anymore.

He sits in a bar in the swanky part of the city and aims the toe of his shoe quite precisely into the crack separating the sheets of metallic stone that line the side of the counter. It's just one of those habits, things that he can't help, and when he waves the bartender away with an irritated scowl, it's the same sort of thing. After all this time, he can't really help being an asshole. He's had the genetic markers for it since birth.

It's not as though he resents his parents for the silver spoon in his mouth, for the polished car keys to his polished sports car that hang in his pocket. Hell, he'd grown up thinking that nothing could get better than this, and had a grand old time doing what he wanted, when he wanted. Growing up in the shadow of the Dark Lord's reign of terror hadn't put him at a disadvantage. With a family like his, it just gave him more power and a bespectacled loser to pick on.

The worst bit was moving on after Voldemort had risen and fallen; it was crawling out of the rubble of their broken, shattered world that made him realise that perhaps he wasn't so important after all. He's kind of always had an inflated sense of self worth, and god, if you knew the personal growth it had taken for him to admit it. When he walked down the street, people glared at him, spat at him, and every wad of disdain and saliva _coming from people he's so much better than_ had pricked his head and his ego until he was battered down to size, bruised and bleeding.

He had hidden in his parents' house, let them rebuild for him, because that's kind of what parents are for, right? They might have been haughty and arrogant for most of his childhood, but he had been haughty and arrogant right back and the war had softened them like marshmallows near a flame. After a while, they got crusty, started to fight back - and Narcissa isn't the type to let someone ruin her minks - but he's always been able to tell that they're different to what they had been. They're not quite the picture of merry upstanding citizens, but it seems as though they're working on it.

Someone slams into his back, gyrating to the music even as they fall against him. "Do you think you could perhaps _not_?" he snaps, turning around to shake the hair out of his eyes and glare at them with the utmost power he could summon. It's ruder than the average person's response, but still markedly more polite than what he wants to say.

"Sorry, man," the guy says, lifting his hands in a 'no harm, no foul' sort of gesture, and then stumbles blindly away, tugging at his shirttails and so obviously lifted on something stronger than the ten pound cocktails they serve here that his brain immediately responds with a contemptuous '_really, they let people like that in here?_'

It's as though his mind works on a couple of different levels now - jeez, at school he'd been too wasted to bother with _one_ - and it's because of this that he gets it, he really does. It's kind of obvious that the social axis of the world has tipped on its head and it's no longer the rich and the beautiful that get given the earth on a silver platter. Bravery is the new currency, and the war is fresh enough in everyone's mind that he still equates to little more than dirt in the wizarding world. It's the Harry Potters of the world, the Weasleys and the Longbottoms, who get the accolades now, and it kind of stings because a) that should have been _him_, and b) logically, he knows they deserve it more than he ever did.

It's logic like this that lands him in a bar as soon as he finishes work, drowning his sorrows alone and measuring the decreasing peanut-to-grog ratio of everyone around him. It's sort of sad. It's sort of pretty fucking pathetic, really, to think that he's twenty-seven years old, a _Malfoy_, and has no life. Things have changed so much; his name holds less weight than a feather, than a grain of sand, than an electron. If he throws it around at a club that's leaning suspiciously towards the wizard-aware, he's more likely to be chucked out than escorted to his own private booth.

All his friends have settled down, blended in. It's typical, really, because that's the way it goes: he'd fallen from high and hit the pavement harder than anyone else. He had never wanted to 'blend' into anything, and by the time he'd hit his mid-twenties and changed his mind, it was too late; it was embedded so deep that the skin had healed over it long ago. He still makes an effort, even if it's just to placate his parents, and he gets an ordinary job and drinks substandard coffee out of cheap mugs with people he wouldn't be caught dead with, every single morning.

It's as though his genetics forbid it, though, because his hair hasn't faded to the murky-dark-blond of the other golden-haired boys he'd associated with and it still stands out, almost fluorescent white under the tungsten lighting in the bar and acutely noticeable on any street corner. He'd shot up in his teenage years and hardened up, almost instinctively, so now he's a tall, lean, bright-blond-haired _regular guy_ with sharp cheekbones and, even still, a surprising hollowness to his features, _and he's too fucking angst-ridden to enjoy the perks it might have brought._

He just can't catch a break, can he?

He's built to stand out, though, so it follows naturally that he's not going to be one of those androgynous drainpipe-jean-wearing guys, with the height and the sharp cheekbones (because his self esteem really couldn't take facing himself in the mirror, dressed like that). He dresses well, and expensively, and somehow, _somehow_, because he'd pulled on his most douche-y persona when he'd gone for his interview, he's managed to inadvertently charm his way into a position that means he can pay for his pretty suits himself.

He wears suits, and he wears sport coats with t-shirts underneath, and he has an entire closet filled with clothes and shoes and belts and more crap than he wants or needs, and an entire apartment filled with the miscellaneous junk that catches his eye on a daily basis. He picks the expensive stuff, the pretentious-looking things that he swears people invent just to take the piss out of the dumb rich people who buy them, and he can't help that it had looked so much better in the store. Still, though, he buys 'artistically pornographic' lamp after lamp, and a bonsai tree for his mantel and an intricate sculpture that's really just a marble sphere, and when he's having a bad money month because his job isn't quite good enough to fund his insanity sometimes, the parents are more than willing to front the bill (though he'd never confess that to anyone who cared to listen) because truthfully, they're a bit worried about their hollow son.

He exploits it, and he exploits them, until he's perched in an apartment that's full of at least the amount of crap he'd used to own before he'd lost it all, stopped caring about it all, but he doesn't feel any different. It's not as though he actually uses any of this shit, except perhaps for that awesome blender that also chops his vegetables and makes his bed that he'd gotten in a drunken stupor off a late-night infomercial. He'd always just kind of taken the approach that they could take away his dignity, but they could not take away his mountains of useless junk unless they had a forklift on hand.

It's illogical - and jeez, that left-side brain thing of his has gotten a work-out, too, these past few years - and he's well aware of it, but there are only so many things a young man of means can do to keep his self-respect at a healthy level, and that's all he's doing with this show of wealth.

He arranges it all so carefully, all measurements and feng shui and rearranging the entire living space when something doesn't fit (and yes, there's a tissue-wrapped sleek kilned something in the back seat of his car, waiting for its pre-planned addition to the collection). It's not a symptom of that vaguely irritating desire to control his environment that had come of having his world ripped out from under him; he tells himself it's to impress the girls he brings back there.

There had been girls, at first, numerous and wasted, but nowadays he goes for an occasional few, always sober, always meaning it. They're always smart, and they're always down for a bit of sarcastic foreplay and some banter that turns the walk of shame into a breakfast invitation that extends to the next morning, and the next, until they're sort-of dating and then they sort-of go their separate ways.

(And perhaps he's softened too, through all of this, because he finds himself falling a little in love with each and every one of them.)

"Hey," and the bartender interrupts his stream of consciousness with the neck of a bottle in his face, "do you want a refill, mate?"

He sighs, under his breath, because his bill is going to be astronomical (and he likes to pretend that he cares about such trivial things) but mostly because he wouldn't be surprised if he's been charged for every one of the peanuts he's eaten over the past hour and he'd really like a steak.

It's hardly necessary to point out that aloud, he agrees emphatically with the bartender and gestures for him to fill it on up with whatever comes to hand.

"_No_," comes a firm voice coming from somewhere behind him, preceded by clacking heels, the sort that make him want to stab himself in the eye because he can't imagine anyone being vain enough to put themselves through that shit. He rolls his eyes, hearing it approach, and he's still arrogant to think that maybe women still make a beeline for him in a drunken haze in a bar.

"I will not," the voice says, louder, closer, with a prim edge that could lop your head off if you got on her wrong side. He recognises that voice, although he's had one too many drinks and he's feeling a little woozy.

"I'm sorry, I was led to believe that 'six o'clock' means six o'clock, and, oh, would you look at the time? I'm in a... god help me, a _bar_ next door and I will wait there for as long as it takes for you to get in gear, and so help me god if I'm late for this dinner party and it's your fault-"

Hermione Granger slides onto a barstool, one or two down from him, with a cell phone pressed to her ear and a pained look on her face. She signals 'no' to the approaching bartender, but uses her shoulder to hold the phone in place as, with one hand, she takes a few peanuts and with the other, she starts to peel the biting straps of her stilettos away from her feet.

Her hair's the same. It's the first thing he notices. Now, it sort of works, because she's got it pinned back and up and the consistency gives it volume, and-

Fuck. Hermione Granger's sitting next to him, in a bar.

He tilts his head and shields his eyes a little, so that he can get a better look at her and what she's wearing without letting on that he's doing so. Aside from that, she's looking neat and- clean; he's got his jacket slung over one shoulder and both sleeves rolled untidily up to his elbows, and he can imagine the tumescence of the tiny capillaries in his eyes that go off like carnival lights whenever he starts to drink.

With a snap, she closes the cell phone, and her glance sweeps over him and then sweeps back, more intense, peering through his parted fingers with her eyebrows raised. "_Malfoy?_" It's as though the word is poison and burns her lips, and really, what's he ever done to _her?_

Realising that the gig is well and truly up, he lets his hand fall to his side and says, with as much world-weary superiority as he can muster, "Evening, Granger. Fancy seeing you here."

She stares at him, and he sort of half-glances back, only noticing that her eyes are lined and accentuated with makeup and her eyebrows - perfectly shaped; damn her genetics - are arrowing down and in towards the bridge of her nose. Her eyes narrow, almost clench, and thin fingers that rest lightly on the bar counter do the same.

Light or noise or movement from the other side of the room floods into his consciousness and he lifts a heavy hand to half-heartedly block it out, but the movement seems slow and inconsequential because the air is suddenly thick and bubbling with a sort of sticky tension that could turn on him at any moment. Everything has slowed to a near halt, and it's just the fury and the pure, unadulterated hatred in her eyes as they burn into him.

He's seen people glaring at him like that before, and he's well aware that more people want him painfully dead than he can count on his fingers and toes. The point is, though, that he'd never given Granger any thought in relation to this category, because oddly enough, she'd never struck him as the type to bear such a grudge. _Logically_, he supposes, she's married to Weasley so they've had a decade to purify and combine their post-war feelings towards him, and she had lost people - he'd heard rumours about her parents and Australia, before he stopped listening- stopped _caring_. She'd always seemed like she was full of compassion, however unwillingly, because he'd _seen_ her helping his classmates, seen a glimmer of something understanding in her eyes at Malfoy Manor.

The way she's looking at him, though, isn't just 'you killed my friends' accusation, or even 'I hate you; die in a hole' disgust. She stares at him, piercing and so very 'I know you - I know what you've done' that it stings a little bit, and he knows, somehow, with some primal instinct, that he's literally lucky he isn't dead, that she's just barely hanging onto the knowledge of sanity and better things than life in prison.

In the gooey, gloppy air that's suddenly surrounding them, sucking up his nose and down his throat, he's alert enough to notice her right hand twitch towards her waist, to her side, and he's just about ready to attempt a tuck-and-roll when she blinks and her eyes have faded back to soft normalcy. The hand remains at her hip, but she stares straight ahead instead of at him, and then, after giving it a moment's thought, turns to meet his eyes.

"Do not even try, Malfoy," she says, staring right at him and the hardness has glinted back into her eyes. It's as though she's looked him up and down and, quite rightly, deduced that he had been about to be an arsehole.

He swallows the 'nice coat; your taste hasn't improved' and the 'yo mamma' joke he'd planned on working into it, and instead, with a slight inward groan, says, "How are you doing?" It's stilted and robotic, and she doesn't respond, but glares and looks at her hands as though it's the theme of the evening.

He nods, disinterested, at her abandoned cell phone. "What's that about?"

She shoots him a vicious look, and then, seeing the bartender staring at them, replies through gritted teeth, "The florists made a mistake. I'm waiting for table arrangements."

"Aren't you the perfect trophy wife," he mutters into his collar, and leans forward so that his quivering hand won't have to go too far to deliver more alcohol to-

Her knuckles, her balled fist that somehow packs more punch than most others, collides with his face, _hard_, and fuck- she's hit his nose, the bitch's had the audacity to hit him in the face in public _again_ and his nose is bleeding- he can feel it wetly slinking out of his right nostril, and he instinctively lifts an arm to rub at it with the back of his wrist and somehow it smears on his business shirt and now he looks like every other pathetic loser in a bar at six thirty on a weeknight.

Well, that's just fan-fucking-tastic.

"Bitch," he starts to hiss, arm still gingerly stemming the flow from his nose, and he glares at her because he's not going to run, this time-

She unties the belt that was holding her coat closed, that fancy black type that swishes expensively around her legs, and carefully shrugs out of it and lays it across her lap. Even sitting down, he can see that she's wearing a swishy dark blue dress that- since when has he paid so much attention to the clothing of people he hates? It's just one of those things, he supposes, but he's got a built-in outfit critic in his head and he can't help but notice that darker blue is much more her colour than the lighter Yule-Ball-blue.

Damn it to hell, he can still feel blood dripping down his top lip and it feels uncomfortably like sweat, uncomfortably the way he felt for a lot of his seventeenth year, and- that smug bitch.

She's ordering a drink from the bartender and flirting innocently - 'Oh, whatever you recommend' - and it takes a while for him to shake his head clear of fog and watch her sip at whichever weak pink cocktail she's been handed, and realise that she's not trying to screw with him or anything. This is _her_, now, and that's mind-boggling in itself. She isn't the kind of girl who drinks at a bar, or who punches a guy in a bar and looks sweet as pie the next moment, and Christ, she bloody well isn't going to get away with it.

"You hit me in the fucking face."

She glances over at him, sort of nonchalant, as though to say 'yes, and what are you trying to say, exactly? I don't see your point'. He watches her twirl the tiny purple umbrella between finger and thumb and it's suddenly not so big a deal if he sits here and drinks with Hermione Granger.

"Don't speak," she instructs, as he takes the napkin the bartender's offered him and dabs delicately at the drying blood under his nose. He looks over, unimpressed, but takes a swig from his glass and doesn't say a word.

He notes the bartender's eyes on them, and, as though that's an eye opener, realises that about five people, all spread out several bar stools away from one another all down the counter, are staring at them, too. Under the blue lighting behind the bar, the man's wink looks demonic, and he ignores it enthusiastically and instead swivels his knees around to Granger's side, a bit.

"So," he begins, and though she throws him a vicious warning look, he doesn't stop speaking, "is there any reason you're sitting here and not bitching out on the florists?"

"I've got time," she says, breathing out and upwards and looking a little perplexedly at the ceiling. "Dinner isn't until eight."

After a moment of silence that isn't filled with violent threats or even anything moderately unfriendly, she adds, as though it's an afterthought connected to her last statement, "I really wanted to hit you. I hope you know that you deserve it."

He wants to retaliate, kind of is about to strike back with something very intelligent that he hasn't thought of yet, but then it occurs to him that it's Granger, and it's just not worth it. Usually he'd be up for a bit of back-and-forth and wordplay, so long as she doesn't hit him again, but the energy's been dragging out of him since he found his way to this stool, and he sort of just wants to sit in silence and ignore her.

He doesn't, of course, because when opportunity knocks, when has he ever kept his mouth shut? He waits for a few seconds, until her comment's still vaporising in the air above their heads, and he hopes that she feels stupid the way he does when he says something that goes un-responded to, and then he comments, "So, I hear you and Weasley are getting on that whole child infestation thing. I'd watch out for that ginger gene, if I were you."

She goes bright red and sends him a glare, and then denies it sideways until she realises that he's laughing at her. Not just laughing. Sometime between her clocking him in the nose and now, he's realised that hell, if coincidence is the only thing that landed Granger on a stool beside him, he's going to enjoy it for all he's worth. These things don't come around every day.

"Stop it," she says, quite seriously at first, and then tries to sip at her drink and ends up sort of inhaling it with a burst of accidental laughter. "Stop it," she demands again, and he can see what she's thinking and it's not as though it's been his aim from the beginning. She's thinking, 'I hate him, I hate him, I cannot be sitting here and laughing and _I hate him_'.

Watching her internal dilemma as she tries to wrangle herself under control is one of the more amusing things he's witnessed in the past week, but he manages to keep the snickering to a minimum and wait for this day to get less weird.

"Stop," she says once more, and the fight's gone out of her and she smiles, thin-lipped, into her drink. Her hand twitches towards the peanuts; he forces his to do the same, and they sort of almost bump in the middle. She takes two, carefully, between finger and thumb, and lays them on the napkin so that the dents in the nuts are facing the same way, and then she prods the plastic basket back towards him, over the thick line separating her side from his.

"So, Hermione Granger. What's new?"

"Certainly not the disdain I feel for you. It's quite apparent that's been there for years."

"That's very nice, Granger- I see the years have hardened you."

"No, Malfoy. It's the time away from you. I have been utterly desolate."

"Stop- stop that."

"I would like to- but, I just- I'm afraid that it's a defence mechanism to protect me from the depth and profundity of my feelings for you."

"Granger!"

Seriousness cuts her tone. "Do not take offence to this, Malfoy, but the past ten years have been wonderful. It's been hard, getting our lives back on track after what you and your family and your people did- but we're all happy, now."

He rolls his eyes, affords her a grimace and a pointed, "And?"

Smugly, she folds her hands in front of her. "It's just nice to see that balance has been restored."

"You're a bit of a bitch, aren't you, Granger?"

She shrugs. The material of her dress flows elegantly as she stands upright. "Turns out, in times like these, you are what you have to be."

She carefully aligns her napkin with the edge of the bar, and centres her glass perfectly on top of it. She needn't really have bothered – looking up the bar, there are upturned glasses and puddles of strong-smelling spirits every few inches. But, leaving her place as immaculately as she found it, she leaves the bar.

'You're not going to believe who I just ran into,' he hears her ghostly voice saying in his mind. 'Malfoy, of all people – sitting in a bar, drowning his sorrows at this time of day. Isn't it lovely? Isn't it just _splendid_ the way he's fallen?'

With some difficulty, he abandons his half-empty glass and follows her out onto the street, where only a glance of dark coat whooshing around a shop door directs him to her presence. In the ten seconds it takes for him to wade through the crowd of people – all flowing in one direction: homeward bound – and to duck into the same café she had, she's managed to settle in at a cosy window table and is already thoroughly entrenched in a small paperback.

_Typical_, he thinks, before sliding into the seat opposite her. "Oh, come now, Granger. That's all in the past. Let me buy you a coffee."

In the reflection of the window, he catches sight of his face, a little blood drying around one nostril. Really, the fact that she's swung off and hit him only a few minutes before has faded off his stream of consciousness. He doesn't _care_ anymore, because he's sitting opposite fancy new Granger waiting on fancy new _flowers_, for Christ's sake. He's a bit intrigued. He's a bit turned on.

"No, thank you." She puts down her book and surveys him as though he's a slug oozing pus all over her table. "You know, in most cultures, my standing up and leaving would indicate my desire to end this conversation."

"In most cultures," he begins to retort, but quickly loses his train of thought and instead comments, "Jeez. Hermione Granger. You've grown up a bit well."

"Thank you. Would you mind leaving me alone? I've had about enough of this I can handle for one day."

"Enough of...?" he prompts- prompts? Him? Draco_ Malfoy?_ He's never been one to put effort into continuing a conversation before- though to be fair, he's never really been one to have a conversation with Hermione Granger at all, let alone one that requires continuance.

She waves her hand at him. He takes the gesture to be all-encompassing, referring to every part of his divine being. "_You_," she says, all contemptuous and weary, and then lets her glance flicker back to her book.

"All right," he says, leaning back and trying to shake the thought from his mind, from his mouth. It's a snap decision, one of those things that seems to have by-passed his brain completely. "Tomorrow, then. Give me a call. I'll take you to lunch."

She stares at him. He thinks she's going to say 'I'm _married_' or something similarly uninteresting, but she surprises him momentarily and instead asks, "Why?"

_Because you make me wonder, _is his mind's response.

Out loud, his answer is different - hedging around her question. "Why _what?_" He can't help but snap a little. He's losing his patience – these mind games don't bode well with him.

"Why on this godforsaken planet would you ever voluntarily spend time with me? And, on that note, I you? We detest each other. I _repulse_ you."

"Oh, grow up, Granger. That was ten years ago."

"If I meant the teasing, the bullying- then that would be a perfectly acceptable answer." For a moment, she's quiet – contemplative. Then, she looks at him, eyes hard. "I don't."

"Fuck this." He leans back, put off by that look in her eyes. "You were the one who was all about bridging the gaps between our houses."

"This isn't about house rivalry anymore, Malfoy."

Her fingers are laced on the table top: so neat, so small. She doesn't want to look at him, but she does, and he can see the way she's serious splashed across her face. Her cell phone rings in her handbag; she ignores it. She doesn't look away.

"Jesus, Granger. What do you think I did?"

Her voice is low, and she ticks off names on her fingers – the names of the dead, her beloved, her husband's brother and the werewolf and that atrocious pink-haired woman and little Colin Creevey who was Petrified in their second year.

Each name strikes deep; something in his chest that he doesn't admit that he has aches a little more each time.

"I-"

'Screw you,' he wants to say. He wants to throw back his chair and storm out, maybe spit a curse backwards at her or throw out a parting acidic rejoinder. 'I had nothing to do with that shit. I was cooped up in the Manor all year, being threatened, watching people die- fuck- you know I was in your Arithmancy class? Sat two rows behind you and flicked ink at your hair? I don't think you ever noticed I had to watch them torture our teacher and- Jesus. It was hard, all right? It was _hard_ – not just for you, not just for you do-gooders who spent half the year off camping. Fuck. You're not the only victim, here – and what makes it so much worse is that I deserved it. So you could move on with a clear conscience and marry Weasley and live your life, and I'm stuck ten years ago. Don't forget that.'

He doesn't say any of it. He imagines the precise expressions that would mar her face as she listens to him speak, could tell you exactly how many frown lines would disappear when she realises that he still carries that scar, thick across his back.

Somehow, he thinks that maybe Hermione Granger hears him, anyway – even though he's silent, even though he does nothing but clench his fists and falter for an appropriate response. Those frown lines do fade away, a little bit, and she slumps down in her chair and he thinks that maybe she does understand, better than he had realised she would.

Moments – interminable, stretching out into breaths and expressions and sentences – pass. They talk a little. Mostly he insults her, but he keeps it a little light, a little affectionate. Eventually, she lets him buy her another cup of coffee, but they don't speak as she drinks it. He watches her – watches lips that had formed the word 'hate' at him so many times, sees her eyes dip into the cup and then raise instinctively to his face with each sip she takes. And it's silent, again, but it doesn't matter.

She checks the time and then carefully places the empty cup on the saucer. "My arrangements will be ready by now."

He stands instinctively. "I'll walk you."

Their eyes meet across the table. "No, it's all right. Goodbye, Draco."

She walks out the door, fishing her phone from her bag as she goes. It's only when she's left his line of sight that he realises that she's left a bill on the table to pay for the cup of coffee he'd bought her.

Well. That's just not right. And there are few things in the world that are within his capabilities to fix: he's going to make this one of them. His reasons are these: a) he would feel bad taking her money, and b) he kind of feels as though he owes her something, and he doesn't know what, but he figures that maybe three dollars for a cup of coffee is a start.

He chases her out onto the street, and the dark has fallen a little heavier and it's more difficult to make her out amidst the people and the moonlight striking sporadically through cracks in the buildings-

When he finally sees her, with the money crushed in his fist and something vaguely funny and incredibly politically incorrect on the tip of his tongue, she's got her nose buried in a bouquet, red and purple and yellow, outside the flower shop, her eyes closed.

It's fitting. He seems to recall that she's always smelled a little like freesias.

Her phone is pressed to her ear, almost hidden by a careful curl. With a smile in her voice, she says,

"You're not going to believe who I just ran into. Malfoy, of all people – and you know, I think he's going to be okay."

He passes close by her, close enough to slip the money into her coat pocket and close enough to smell the freesias wisping from her, and then he walks home. He walks home. He opens an account on eBay – because, really, he has more useless crap than he's ever going to need – and then he finds her address in the phonebook and sticks it to his mirror. _Just in case_, he thinks.


End file.
